Skyscrapers are said to be the cathedrals of the twentieth century. If that is the case, then perhaps parking garages are the village churches of our time. We must start by taking time to consider the mundane. The Architecture of Parking by Simon Henley is the kind of text that jumps out from the shelf to very few people, but of course, I am one of them.

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Posted at 28 February 13 at 16.02 in Culture, Books

My mentor in the field of history, Dr. Carroll Engelhardt, a professor emeritus at Concordia College, Moorhead, and author of several local history books, recently published an unusual memoir of his boyhood growing up on a small farm in eastern Iowa. In The Farm at Holstein Dip, Engelhardt simultaneously walks the reader through the stories of his upbringing and the stories of a bygone way of life, that of the rural farm family. He told me that he has received mixed reviews from readers who find themselves more interested in one side of this split than the other, but I found the balance to be an intriguing way to achieve what I take to be his broader intent — to honor many aspects of a bygone way of life, and to mourn their passage.

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Posted at 08 February 13 at 19.02 in Culture, Books

Close time spent with family, especially the aged, is to be cherished at any stage of life, but is especially important as one grows old enough to at least recognize that the youthful tendency toward self-centeredness is least beneficial to one’s self. It is only in old age that the good stories begin to be told. It is in the twilight years that the guard comes down and the great men (and women!) of our family histories reveal themselves as good humans, a far more important thing at the end of the day. 

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Posted at 04 November 12 at 15.11 in Culture, Miscellaneous, Books

let us go places and eat things

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Posted at 09 September 12 at 11.09 in Culture, Miscellaneous, Travel